[whitebelly]

When I go to artist list and then "artist info", I get the OSD keyboard for artist entry. If the artist is not found by the scraper, I get stuck at this step. I just want to get to the info screen which allows you to manually browse and select local images. The info screen pops right up for artists that have been found by the scraper, even if no artwork is found, but for obscure artists you are stuck in the endless loop.

I've tried all the scrapers, now back on Universal. I've tried disabling all scrapers as well.

Is there a way to disable or skip this artist entry step? Ideally there would be a skip option at that point.

Frodo / OpenELEC (also same problem on my Eden/windows build)

(searches revealed others with similar issues getting stuck at this entry screen, but no resolutions)

[whitebelly]

I have figured out a workaround for this issue.

There is a table in the music database labelled 'artistinfo'. When you select 'Artist Information' for any given artist, if a record exists in the 'artistinfo' table, then XBMC will bring you to the artist info screen. If a record does not exist, then XBMC will try to scrape, and if it cannot recognize the artist, will return you to the OSD keyboard to enter the name manually, and this loop will continue for unrecognized artists.

The solution is to create a record in this table for every artist. Here is how I did it.

1) Make a copy of the music database (working copy) and open using a sqlite editor/browser. A complete list of artists is found in the 'artist' table. If I knew the SQL commands to add records to the 'artsistinfo' table for every artist in the 'artist' table, I could do that here and be done, but I have no SQL skillz so on to step two....

2) Export the 'artist' table to csv file, and open in EXCEL

3) Delete all but the artist column.

4) Add a column full of <artist><name> before the artist column

5) Add a column full of </name></artist> to the right

6) Copy all and paste into text editor (notepad++)

7) Clean up using find & replace (remove extra spaces)

8) Replace special characters (& and ') with (&amp; and &apos) (not sure if this is needed, but took the safe route)

9) Add <musicdb></musicdb> tags. Result looks like;

<musicdb>
.
<artist><name>Leon Redbone</name></artist>
<artist><name>Levon Helm</name></artist>
<artist><name>Little Charlie &amp; The Nightcats</name></artist>
<artist><name>Big Smoo &amp; the Trailer Park Kings</name></artist>
.
.
</musicdb>


10) Save as musicdb.xml

11) Back to XBMC, settings-->import music library. Import musicdb.xml

This will append your database and force a record for every artist into the 'artistinfo' table. Now when you request artist info for any artist, you are taken to the artist info screen, regardless of whether it has scraped or not.

Now I can use the existing GUI to add thumbs and fanart for un-scrapable artists.

[whitebelly]

Just wanted to point out some changes above. It turns out you don't need any tags other than <name> for this workaround, so I removed all of that. This solves the one negative side effect of over-writing some existing artist information.

[jrbastien]

Thank you for taking the time to post solutions to other XBMC users. This is much appreciated.